Haute Couture Details: Chanel Spring Summer 2016

What could be better than taking extreme fashion risks into Haute Couture collections? Perhaps taking an extremely serious issue and turning into a pretext for luxury?

I’m always baffled by Karl Lagerfeld’s chameleonic ability to twist and turn and take the entire world with him in a crazy fashion journey season after season. The Spring Summer 2016 Chanel Haute Couture collection was as splendid as it was derrelictuous. Yes, I’m making that a fashion word. For all things that are brought to the fashion level without having anything to do with fashion in the first place. Der Kaiser can bring a derrictulous storm upon the fashion world and be utterly nonchalant about it.(more images will follow, do come back to see all the details magic right under our eyes!)

Who could ever say no to ‘Chanel’? who could ever say ‘no thank you!’ to a piece designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel? The man is a legend, the Maison is a legend, everything about and around Chanel was so meticulously woven into a web of magic calling everyone to join the image myth. And it’s like that childhood spider web – the Chanel magic web never breaks, no matter the number of elephants dancing on it!

And this season’s elephant, was ‘ecologie’. Karl is a man of his time, of every time, so when approaching the (movie) Awards season with his presentation, he must feel some kind of inspiration. How are we otherwise to explain the many Start Wars & Ex Machina infusions from this Chanel Couture Spring 2016 collection? Allow the Master to explain:

‘Everything is about ecologie but it’s never done in a luxurious way. I like the idea to take ecologie one step further and to make a high fashion, very elegant and very luxurious version of it and to do beautiful embroidery with wood, straws and things like these.’

The base concepts of ‘ecologie’ are broken over and over and stepped on by the models du jour. Just like all else Chanel, I’m afraid – they’re ephemerid condition is carefully tucked under this huuuge myth that has become the Chanel Maison. It should be about things that are timeless, with an unquestionable revolutionary impact over not just fashion, but over our everyday lives.

Need I remind you how Chanel brought the most mundane details and ideas to fashion and style them beyond doubt and social barriers into every corner of this world? She brought pants to us. Like she invented the wheel. For women. We live in dangerous times, my dear fashion friends! We live a present which is constantly trying to make a big deal out of anything and everything, when people strive to be original and end up being forgotten instead.

When visionaries’ horizons spread just up to their nose tip and wrap tightly around logos and bank accounts. I’m celebrating and bowing to the little hands as always! The usually unseen close-ups of the myriad of hand stitches that brought these garments to life. (as a side note, I would loooove to see Lagerfeld’s sketches too, the very departing point for this collection, or any other one):

‘we had to make everything. Normally they make embroidery with the existent material. We had to create the material, those things don’t exist. The craftsmanship is quite… I don’t even know how people have the patience to do it. I’m fascinated … it’s easy for me to say let’s do let’s do but they have to do it…’